Page 50 of Haunted

I pull my mind away from the pain to focus on a solution. I’m caught. What she sees is a betrayal. Her heart is injured. Broken. Will she accept my explanation? The truth?

“Not betrayal,” I grunt. “Freedom.” Because I care for you.

She laughs. “Freedom? From what? From my power? From my rule.”

I spit my words. “Freedom from him.”

She removes her foot from my hand and crouches. I immediately curl my mangled hand to my stomach. She lifts my chin and comes close, so close that I’m lost in her eyes.

She’s mesmerizing. Beautiful. Volatile. Capable of anything. I know this. Her eyes tell me this. That death is inevitable unless I can make her understand.

“I am his and no others,” she says.

“You could be mine.”

“Dear Caedryn.” Her words are syrupy sweet. A sticky trap. “It’s your heart that gets you into trouble.”

“You wished I was spouting sonnets. You wished for a companion.” A lover.

“An amusement. I assure you. You have brought me much pleasure. No one else has ever stood up to me, has ever questioned me, or has given counsel as freely as you—”

“I aim to please.” I grunt and shift my knees. “Your Highness.” I wince. The pain only serves to sharpen my focus.

“Caedryn.” Her hand smooths along the back of my scalp, and a lock of my dark hair slides through her palm, as if she’s musing, as if she wishes to sooth—before her claws strike. “You have been a pawn. Did you actually think I didn’t know what was going on under my own nose?”

“What, my empress, has been going on? What do you think I’m involved in?”

“Your dear Neifion hasn’t been completely truthful to you. He’s been using you. All of you. All the dragon riders.” She pauses and looks so sympathetic with her eyebrows bent in compassion. “And poor Siarl.”

“What of the dragon riders?”

“I’ve felt them tear away one by one. Neifion thought he fooled me, thought I didn’t know the instant he broke from my hold. Did you think I would be blind to the growing resistance?”

“What of Siarl? He was innocent.”

“Oh no. Nesta learned that truth for me. As she healed him, she saw everything. She dove deep into his mind. She saw the plots. The schemes.”

Nesta was never to be trusted. I was so misled by her kindness. “Siarl had nothing to do with this.”

“He had everything to do with it, and so he paid with his life.”

“So you did kill him. Just as you killed my father.”

The empress smirks. “Your father! Your father? You really don’t know how far back this goes do you? Your father was the start of it all.”

“That was over two hundred years ago. How could he have—?”

The empress stands and turns to Neifion. “Why don’t you tell him who your original rider was? Why you chose Caedryn as your rider.”

“What do you mean?” I hiss.

Neifion furrows the ridge above his eye. I see it then. A memory. My father, with a gray dragon, leaving Caer, with a woman in his arms. My mother.

What is this? I ask.

Your mother was a prisoner, Neifion says. Sentenced to death. Your father freed her because he’d fallen in love with her. He broke from the empress’s hold to do so. The cost was his life.

You were the first free dragon?

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